Preparing for Al Gore’s Lecture at Rice University

I have a ticket to Al Gore’s global warming lecture at Rice University on October 23 and plan to attend, I’m very curious about what he will say. The announcement says he will take questions, so I’ve scoured his web site to get ideas for a question should I have the opportunity.

His scientific credentials are thin, The Washington Times, after viewing Al Gore’s Harvard Transcript as released by the Washington Post, concluded that Al Gore was a slow learner in college, especially in science. Notably, he received a D and C- in his natural science college courses and avoided all math and logic courses. So, it would seem he is poorly prepared to lecture us on climate science, the questions will have to be simple, we cannot get into the weeds.

From the NOAA NSIDC World Glacier Inventory

Al Gore’s web site states that he founded “The Climate Reality Project” in 2005. This is a non-profit organization “devoted to solving the climate crisis.” So, what is the “climate crisis” according to Al Gore? They have many slick e-books that you can download from their web site, including “The 12 Questions” and “Climate 101,” these documents give the following reasons.

What is the climate crisis?

Global temperatures are rising.

More frequent and more devastating storms, floods, droughts, etc.

Glaciers melting at a “record” pace.

Rising sea level.

What is the cause of climate change?

Al Gore believes it is primarily man-made carbon dioxide due to burning fossil fuels, although methane emissions and deforestation play a role. He offers no evidence that this is the case other than “Scientists are crystal clear about the relationship between carbon pollution and climate change.”

Potential question:

Mr. Gore, current carbon dioxide levels are 0.04% of the atmosphere, if we double the amount, to 0.08%. How can such a small change in atmospheric composition have such a dramatic effect, given that 99.9% of the thermal energy on the surface of the Earth is in the oceans?

These ideas are asserted in his documents and no evidence is presented. Instead, he claims oil and gas companies and their minions are “attacking” the science of climate. This is as if science were a thing that can be attacked, rather than a process and a method of learning. A critical part of science is actively trying to disprove any proposed idea or theory, regardless of its popularity. Thus, “attacks,” if we may use this word, are an essential part of the scientific method. It is this extremely unscientific idea that climate change is an unassailable, pristine and perfect law of nature, that rankles me, as a scientist, the most.

But, then, Al Gore is not a scientist, either by training, experience, or education. When Al Gore went to college, climate was studied by geologists and meteorologists, it was a sleepy field in those days. I have always suspected that the field “Climate Science” was invented to exclude geologists and meteorologists from it, since they were the only scientists who knew anything about it.

How certain are scientists that climate change is man-made and dangerous?

“Climate scientists have estimated the planet has previously taken around 5,000 years to recover – by warming between 4-7 degrees Celsius – after an ice age has ended.”

“In the twentieth century alone, the average surface temperature increased by 0.8 degrees Celsius – a rate eight times faster than a typical post-ice-age-recovery. And this cycle is rapidly accelerating.”

The first two are “appeals to authority” and easily dismissed. The reference for the first is Cook, et al. (2013). Refutations of the 97% consensus myth are numerous and conclusive, we won’t spend time on these statements other than to recommend the interested reader read Legates, et al., 2013, Legates et al.(2), 2013 and the WSJ article by Bast and Spencer here. Legates, et al.(2) make the following point that is important here:

“Science education must be such that students can, in fact, argue successfully why they believe what they believe. Understanding what is not known and why must be an essential component of that education. Simple recitation of facts coupled with the demonization of any position or person who disagrees with a singularly-derived conclusion does not develop critical thinking and has no place in education. Students cannot learn the scientific method or critical thinking, nor will they benefit until they have learned to examine all scientific evidence without fear or prejudice.”

Item #3 is more scientific and can be checked. We should also point out that technically we are still in an ice age, in item 3 I think they are referring to the last glacial maximum (or “glacial”) within the current ice age. Figure 1 is a temperature reconstruction (see here for more details) that relies mostly on marine temperature proxies, thus it reflects shallow global ocean temperature changes. 99.9% of the Earth’s surface thermal energy is in the oceans and less than 0.1% is in the atmosphere so ocean temperatures are a good way to track long-range global temperature changes. The Earth has been in its fourth major ice age, since the dawn of complex life 600 million years ago, for the past 2.6 million years (see figure 7 here and the discussion). Our current cold period is named the Quaternary. During the Quaternary there have been many periods of glacial advances and retreats, the most recent glacial advance ended about 11,700 years ago when we entered the current interglacial warm period, the “Holocene.”

Figure 1 starts on the left-hand side at the beginning of the Holocene with a temperature anomaly of -1.5°C and reaches a peak of +0.5°C about 1,700 years later. This increase of 2°C occurs near the middle of the warm Holocene Thermal Optimum (HCO). After the 5.9 kyr event (3,900 BC) temperatures begin a long decline. This change from the warm HCO to the Neoglacial decline is called the Mid-Holocene transition (MDT). The coldest point, since the beginning of the Holocene, is reached in the Little Ice Age (LIA) about 400 years ago. Besides noting the major periods in the Holocene, we’ve also labeled the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), the Roman Warm Period (RWP), the end of Bronze Age cold period, the 4.2 Kyr cold period, the 5.9 kyr cold period (at the MDT, when the Sahara began to become a desert), the 8.2 kyr event (a time of great human migration), and the 10.3 kyr event (this is Javier’s B-5 event). Thus, the Earth recovered from the most recent glacial advance in about 1,700 years by warming about 2°C. The warming is somewhat jerky, and there are periods where the average temperature rises or falls 0.5°C or more in less than 100 years.

Figure 2 shows the Northern Hemisphere reconstruction, using mostly marine temperature proxies, and Vinther et al.’s Greenland reconstruction using airborne ice-core proxies. The Northern Hemisphere temperatures increase more slowly than the world temperatures due to the effect of melting glaciers. It takes the same amount of thermal energy to melt ice (80 calories for 1g) as it does to raise the temperature of liquid water 80°C (80 calories for 1g, see figure 4 here). In the Northern Hemisphere it takes about 5,000 years to reach the highest Holocene Thermal Optimum temperature anomaly of 1.5°C, from a glacial period low of less than -3°C. Either the Northern Hemisphere reconstruction or the Greenland (Vinther et al., 2009, Nature) reconstruction were probably what Gore’s web site was referring to, although they explicitly say “the planet.” The global average temperature change was less, but it was more rapid, since the Southern Hemisphere is mostly ocean and ocean ice melts faster than land-based ice. Figure 2 also shows a decline of 4°C from the peak temperatures of the Holocene Thermal Optimum to the low point seen 400 years ago during the Little Ice Age. Even today, we have not fully recovered from the bitter cold of that period when the Thames River and New York Harbor froze (1779) and fur coats were needed in Cairo. These critical facts are not mentioned on Gore’s web site.

As for Gore’s fourth point, the 0.8°C can be seen in both figure 1 and figure 2, but if the whole record of the Holocene is considered, it is not unusual, many similar temperature increases are seen in the records. As for the claimed recent acceleration in temperatures, it is not apparent in the satellite record shown in figure 3.

Figure 3, source: Dr. John Christy’s testimony to the U.S. House Science, Space and Technology committee, 29 March 2017.

In figure 3 satellite tropospheric temperatures are compared to independent weather balloon tropospheric temperature measurements. In addition, Dr. Christy shows the major world weather center “reanalysis” composite temperatures for the troposphere as purple diamonds. This latter estimate combines many sources of air temperature, including satellite and weather balloon data. We can see that temperatures increase from the early 1980’s to 2003 by about 0.35°C and then flatten out for the next 13 years. They do tic up a bit in 2014-1016 due to the recent El Nino, but there is no other sign of any “acceleration.” Dr. Christy also compares these observations with the Climate Models, which are used to predict the climate effects of human carbon dioxide and methane emissions, and other human activities. As we can easily see, the models consistently over-estimate temperatures.

Potential questions:

Mr. Gore, Dr. Christy has shown that the climate models used today predict higher temperatures than have been observed. Is this because they overestimate man’s effect on global temperatures?

Mr. Gore, The IPCC computed the human component of global warming by comparing climate model predictions of natural climate to predictions of climate that included natural plus human activities. If climate models cannot successfully predict global temperatures, how can this calculation, of human influence, be accurate?

Mr. Gore, The IPCC computed the human component of global warming by comparing climate model predictions of natural climate to predictions of climate that included natural plus human activities. This is obliquely referenced in “12 Questions,” and then you state “it’s clear that man-made carbon dioxide pollution is overwhelming responsible for the global warming we’re experiencing now.” Are there any direct measurements of the human impact on the Earth’s climate aside from simple suggestions that it might exist, like laboratory measurements?

The web site’s ebook “Climate 101” has a chapter discussing how we know we are causing global warming. Here we address that section.

Mr. Gore, your web site has a graphic (from Skeptical Science) entitled “How we know we’re causing global warming.” Yet, all the evidence presented on the graphic is simply proof that either the planet is warming or that fossil fuel carbon dioxide is increasing. None of the evidence suggests these two are linked. How do you link the two? Why couldn’t the warming since the very cold Little Ice Age simply be a natural recovery from an extended cold spell?

Mr. Gore, your web site states that “Fifteen of the 16 hottest years on record have occurred in the twenty-first century.” At most the record only goes back to 1880, at the end of the Little Ice Age, the coldest period since the beginning of the Holocene, so even if this assertion is true, why is this significant?

Mr. Gore, your web site states that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have shrunk. Yet, NASA has reported that Antarctic sea ice reached a new maximum extent in both 2012 and 2014. They have also reported, in 2015, that the total ice volume in Antarctica is increasing. In “12 questions” you argue that land ice and sea ice are different, yet NASA says both are increasing in Antarctica. Do you want to comment on this?

Mr. Gore, your web site states that sea level rise is accelerating. No evidence is given to support that assertion, is there any evidence that the normal rate of sea level rise observed as we come out of the Little Ice Age is increasing? Global sea level data does not appear to show an increasing trend.

Mr. Gore, your web site states that ocean temperatures have increased 0.3°. No reference for this number is given. Yet the JAMSTEC Argo and Triton data for 2000-2014 only show an increase of 0.07°C for the ocean to its average depth of 3,688 meters, assuming the temperature at 3688 meters is zero. The actual measurements are to 2,000 meters and the temperature for the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean has only increased 0.13°C. Were you referring to the whole ocean, or only the upper ocean? Are the units Fahrenheit?

Mr. Gore, your web site states that “… we’re already starting to see what a warmer world has in store for us. Intense rainstorms, severe droughts, and heat waves are becoming more frequent. Rising seas are damaging homes near the water. Some populations of animals are starting to die out. And that’s just 0.8 degrees!” Yet, Roger Pielke Jr. stated before the House Science committee on 29 March 2017 that:

“There is little scientific basis in support of claims that extreme weather events – specifically, hurricanes, floods, drought, tornadoes – and their economic damage have increased in recent decades due to the emission of greenhouse gases. In fact, since 2013 the world and the United States have had a remarkable stretch of good fortune with respect to extreme weather, as compared to the past.”

He has also written more here. Do you wish to explain the difference in these statements? The IPCC also see no correlation between extreme weather and climate change.

Mr. Gore, your web site states that “flooding … [is] swallowing entire islands. The link is broken, can you identify the islands that are being swallowed? Many recent claims of “sinking islands” have later been proven false.

Mr. Gore, your website states that human’s release 100 times more carbon dioxide than volcanoes. If true, why is this not a good thing? The only measured effect of additional carbon dioxide on the Earth is the addition of global vegetated area on the Earth according to Zhu, et al., 2016 in Nature Climate Change. NASA reports that that the “greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States.” How is significant greening of the planet a bad thing?

Conclusions

There are many more misleading, or simply false statements on the web site, but these were the ones that stood out. I avoided the “economics of climate change” statements since that always devolves to arguing whose “fantasy” numbers are correct. Economic predictions are shaky enough without adding shaky climate predictions to the mix, let’s not move one more dimension from reality.

Al Gore is not a scientist, but due to his popularity we must pay attention to him and address his assertions. If I get a chance to ask a question after his presentation, I would like it to be easily understandable and get to the root of the speculation that human activities dominate climate change. Help in choosing a question or suggestions of new questions are welcome.

184 thoughts on “Preparing for Al Gore’s Lecture at Rice University”

Hey Andy, since it’s topical, you oughta ask him why Tipper left him – if it maybe had anything to do with that masseuse in Portland Oregon that he tried to rape.
Also ask him if he got any of Harvey’s money.

Agreed, Mick.
I would not even attempt to ask him a technical question about the science. He would, in any case, just bat it away with “97%, blah, blah, blah…”
I would ask him a practical question about the politics of China and India and Brazil and…all the rest. Whatever Gore may assert about the Paris agreement, these countries have agreed to do precisely nothing that will seriously inconvenience them. Their trajectory is broadly development along Western lines, so the CO2 goals will not be achieved. Ever. We cannot afford to pay these countries to do otherwise. Nor can we make them do otherwise. And, in any case, they have the moral high-ground.
The Paris agreement is an exercise in utter, utter political futility, whatever Gore may say. It’s only achievable goal is economic self-flagellation and collapse. The world is not actually in such dire straits as these conference-organizers would like us to believe. Getting the world’s politicians to acknowledge that would be a triumph. Then, maybe, more of our energies might be directed towards useful and achievable goals.

“All questions will be screened first.”
well that’s surely the case but even so:
” Al Gore is not a scientist, either by training, experience, or education.”
so why would anybody ask him a science question?

how many of those associations held vote of members they claim to represent

“Climate scientists have estimated the planet has previously taken around 5,000 years to recover – by warming between 4-7 degrees Celsius – after an ice age has ended.”

why does he call this a “recovery”? The normal state of the climate now is glaciation. It is the current mild intergalcial which unusual. In the geologically near future Earth will “recover” to its normal glaciated state and will rid itself of the scourge of humanity.

“In the twentieth century alone, the average surface temperature increased by 0.8 degrees Celsius – a rate eight times faster than a typical post-ice-age-recovery. And this cycle is rapidly accelerating.”

Again it’s not a “recovery” it’s an anomaly but this is stupid apples to oranges comparison. You need to compare to warming periods of similar length: ie a century, not 5000 years. Surface temps can change by 20 in a matter of hours. That tells us nothing either.If you get a chance, ask him if he’s still pissed about losing the election to Bush. Is that why he is out to destroy oil businesses and take vengeance on the electorate?

I would be tempted to invoke Karl Popper, (who Big Al will have never heard of), and test the validity of the hypothesis “Global Warming is caused by Anthropogenic CO2” by asking Big Al how come the predicted warming is so far from the empirical (as shown in your Fig 3).
Cheers
Rogerhttp://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com

Arguing with Al Gore is like playing chess with a pigeon; it’s going to strut around, knock over all the pieces, crap on the board and squawk that it won! Or to put it another way, you can’t have a rational discussion with a person committed to irrationality.

ask him about the science behind his chakras
” There are seven key points in the subtle body that are thought to be vortexes of energy, known as chakras. When energy becomes blocked in a chakra, it triggers physical, mental, or emotional imbalances that manifest in symptoms such as anxiety, lethargy, or poor digestion.”https://www.yogajournal.com/practice/beginners-guide-chakras
should they be released on an unsuspecting world?

There are so many possible questions from which to choose, that I don’t envy you having to select just one. Maybe pick three, in case someone else asks one or two of them.
Since Gore has asked, “What else can it be (causing Arctic sea ice decline)?”, I’d consider asking about the fact that it has increased since 2012 and stayed flat on average since 2007. This was the first year since 1979 in which no new low was set within five years.
And why did Antarctic sea ice grow from 1979 to 2014?
His iconic Kilimanjaro ice also offers rich pickings.

1) Why are the early 30th century warming and late 20th century warming cycles practically identical, despite cleaner air in the industrialized world after the 1970s?
2) Why did earth cool dramatically from the 1940s until 1977, when the PDO flipped, despite rising CO2?
3) If, as seems in evidence, climate sensitivity is actually in the range of 0.0 to 2.0 degrees C per doubling of CO2, rather than 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C, as asserted by IPCC without evidence, what’s the worry?
4) Since previous warm intervals in the Holocene have all been hotter than the Current Warm Period, what’s the problem? Ditto the previous interglacial, the Eemian, and others before it during the Pleistocene? Especially since sea level rise hasn’t accelerated in recent decades above its average since the end of the LIA.

“Why are the early 30th century warming and late 20th century warming cycles practically identical”
I’m hoping you meant early 21st century. If not, can I borrow your time machine when you aren’t using it?

Typo for 20th.
Although in the 30th century, we’ll also probably be in a warming cycle. It will just be cooler than the current one.
They occur at about millennial intervals:
Holocene Optimum: Ended ~5 Ka.
Egyptian Warm Period: Peak ~4 Ka.
Minoan WP: ~3 Ka.
Roman WP: ~2 Ka.
Medieval WP: ~1 Ka.
Current WP: 0 Ka (although maybe not yet peak)
Next WP: ~ 1 K years in the future.

Covered the truth about Kilimanjaro in essay The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Root cause is illegal logging which has removed over 90% of the cloud forest below the summit (leaving now grass covered slopes) and 35% of the montaine forest below that. Result is much lower summit updraft humidity, so more rapid sublimation. Summit doesn’t melt even in summer, too high and cold.

Andy: Why did Al assert polar bears were endangered by disappearing Arctic summer sea ice when (a) it hasn’t disappeared and (b) polar bears do most of their feeding on spring ice during the seal whelping season.

Gore is not a scientist, thus he is not qualified to answer ANY science-based question you pose. He is a politician and can answer political questions. For what I suggest, it would be handy to have either the printouts from my photo links, or the actual 3 books they came from, in this order: Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” movie companion book, Ross Gelbspan’s “The Heat is On”, and Gore’s “Earth in the balance, with bookmarks at pages 263, 34 and 360, respectively. The question is as follows:
“Mr Gore, in your movie companion book, you say Ross Gelbspan is the discoverer of the leaked industry strategy memo phrase you spelled out in your 2006 movie ‘Reposition global warming as theory rather than fact’ ( http://gelbspanfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/AnIncT-263.jpg ), which you and he insinuate is smoking gun evidence for an industry-directed misinformation campaign utilizing skeptic climate scientist shills. Gelbspan’s book goes further, quoting that campaign’s targeting goals aimed at ‘older, less-educated men’ and ‘younger, lower-income women.’ ( http://gelbspanfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/THio-pg-34.jpg ) But your Earth in the Balance book quoted those same targeting phrases ( http://gelbspanfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ErintheB-360.jpg ) years before Gelbspan first mentioned them. YOU discovered those phrases, not Gelbspan. Why have you never taken credit for that?”
To potentially uninformed university event question screeners, you might get this question past them, looking like some kind of Gore-worshiping hero. But the moment Gore reads the question, I could almost guarantee that Security would be called, and you would be escorted out of the room. For those unaware of it, I detail how the Gore-Gelbspan accusation based on those supposedly leaked memos is beyond worthless: http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=4024

lus lots.
the Gore effect is – it appears – real.#
Snow shoes, too.
A question –
To help our audience, to the nearest one-tenth of one percent, how much Carbon Dioxide – CO2, you call it the fatal gas [check CHECK] – is there in the Earth’s atmosphere today?

Al Gore’s answer about the court ruling was highly misleading since the Judge DID rule there were numerous errors in his so called documentary.
He is a flaming coward to openly discuss the issues with anyone who doesn’t lick his shoes.

If you go down ANY line of questioning directly related to the science, he’ll shut you down. He’ll either appeal to authority (97% blah blah blah) or call you a deni*r.
May I suggest a different approach? Use science by authority. Bring up United Nations IPCC AR5 as the authoritative source on climate change, then ask about the following quote from Chapter 10 WG2Changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other aspects of socioeconomic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change. {10.10}
Question: Mr. Gore, given that the IPCC says that the impact of climate change to these things is small in comparison to climate change, why are we treating climate change as the number one threat to our well being by orders of magnitude when the best climate science in the world says it isn’t?

Sigh. I should not comment until the 2nd cup of coffee is fully ingested. The question should read:
Question: Mr. Gore, given that the IPCC says that the impact of these things is large in comparison to climate change, why are we treating climate change as the number one threat to our well being when the best climate science in the world says it isn’t?

Be prepared if need be to point out quickly how the bogus 97% figure was derived in Zimmerman’s survey, and to mention the world-leading scientists who are skeptical of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change Alarmism.
It’s based upon 75 out if 79 (94.9%) cherry-picked “actively publishing climate scientists” out of more than 3000 government and academic (not private sector) scientists who responded from the over 10,000 queried. All other groups of scientists answered both questions* “yes” at lower rates. IIRC only 47% of the category of “economic geologists” answered both “yes”. And there was not third question, ie “Is warming good or bad?”
*Has earth warmed since c. AD 1850? If so, has this warming been caused significantly by human activities? Or questions to those effects.

Mr. Gore, the great sceptical climate website WUWT had 330 million views as of Oct. 2017 in the past 10 (?) years. Those hundreds of million climate interested people
all over the world are wrong ? And count less than your number “97% of scientists”?

Andy, I suspect that you will have to submit your question ahead of time. There is no way that Al Gore is going to run the risk of having to answer a real question. Good luck. And, please let us know how it went even if you are not allowed to ask any question.

True. Which is why submit a softball question with a softball follow up question. Even go to the trouble of wording it so that the preamble sounds about the same as your actual question, one that he can knock out of the park so will be more interested in letting you have the microphone. The goal is to get the microphone, and then say what you want before they can cut you off.

You’re a better man than I am. Several years ago I found “earth in the balance” in the 98 cent bin at a book store. I have tried to read it numerous times but it is so full of lies, bad science and poorly written that I can’t get even close to half way.

Why has there been no warming at the South Pole?
The air there is so dry that the effect of more CO2 should be most pronounced there, since the most important GHG, H2O, isn’t there to slow radiation to space. Yet, since records have been kept there, there has been no warming.

Why has the surface supposedly warmed more rapidly and more than the atmosphere, when the AGW hypothesis requires just the opposite?
Why is there no tropical tropospheric hot spot, as predicted by the GCMs?

You have many excellent questions. They are far too long, for the most part. In verbal communication, if you go past about 20 words you exceed the capacity of most people to hold the premises and linkages in mind while they formulate an answer. For Al, the limit might be 5.

Al Gore is the biggest, baddest Climate Liar on this planet, so don’t expect an honest answer to your question. And the closer to home it hits, the more likely it is he will bring out the “d” word, and otherwise attack the questioner. That is his MO.

On a recent cruise into Glacier Bay in Alaska we were given a map that showed that in 1860 the bay was a complete glacier more than 1000 metres deep and some 10 km wide. The map shows the huge decrease over the centuries to the now cruisable bay. Why the enormous concern with so called climate change just now and what caused the previous huge melts?

I tend not to consider global temperature very relevant. Slightly more meaningful are those for N. Hemisphere land where the most of the humans live.
I’ve got a surprise to see that during last thirty years N.H. land temperature has risen full 1.5 degrees C.http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NHLTA.gif
This may be, or may be not correct, but what is true is that since1.5 degrees C rise has past only just noticeable, the next 0.5 degree C will not be a catastrophic for billions of people who live on the land in the N. Hemisphere.
Note: No pause in the temperature for the most of humanity. Oh well….

Tell him that oceans inundating coastal cities is one of the more compelling issues of Climate Change.
Tell him that the popular press often quotes a meter or more of sea level rise by 2100.
Tell him that’s an average rate of nearly 12 mm/yr for the next 87 years.
Tell him that the satellite data says the is rate less than a third of that today.
Ask him when that rate is projected to attain that increased rate?

While it is true that it rarely snows in Houston, he did give a talk in a major snow storm at the Sundance festival once. Debbie Bacigalupi sent me this link to a video of a question she ask him there: : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_19OpAUn4g

When did the climate start changing? Billions of years ago? Millions of years ago? When Rockefeller started pumping oil out of the ground?
Do you believe that photosynthesis is necessary for life on earth? Is there a minimum level of CO2 required for life on earth to continue?
Scientists have studied the satellite photos of earth and determined during the satellite era the amount of greenery on earth is up 11-14%. Do you agree with the scientists that most of this is due to increased CO2 levels?

When did the climate start changing? Billions of years ago? Millions of years ago? When Rockefeller started pumping oil out of the ground?
Do you believe that photosynthesis is necessary for life on earth? Is there a minimum level of CO2 required for life on earth to continue?
Scientists have studied the satellite photos of earth and determined during the satellite era the amount of greenery on earth is up 11-14%. Do you agree with the scientists that most of this is due to increased CO2 levels?

Ask him to comment on the 600-800 year phase lag in the Vostok ice cores (the record consistently shows that temperature changes precede CO2 changes), and why he didn’t mention this in his first movie (it was known at that time)?

Hot spot should occur with any warming, not just GHG driven warming. But the models predict a robust hot spot which is not observed (Santer et al 2005). Short term hotspots are observed but not the expected long term hot spot. Sherwood et al 2008 did torture the data statistically to find a hot spot, but a “robust” hot spot shouldn’t be that hard to find. So this model/data bust does not disprove AGW, but may suggest a fundamental problem with the models.

I’ll buy the second one, forget the first. This is something that should be asked of every believer –
What do you consider the ideal temperature for the earth?
That should lead to some review of that belief..

I would ask why, if it is not yet as warm as the Roman or Minoan warm periods, why is there such concern? And what were the consequences of that warming? But Algore will certainly screen questions, and only “answer” those he has a canned response to.

“The IPCC also see no correlation between extreme weather and climate change.”. I believe that NASA also says there is no detectable correlation between extreme weather and climate change, so you might want to add that fact to the question.

You might ask him about his Carbon Footprint. How does it compare to the people in this room? Or is it greater than all the people in the room put together?
I would like to ask him how much has profited in the last decade by promoting his Global Warming Scam.

Well your first mistake is behaving like a normal honest human being and posting this piece on a publicly accessible site and asking for advice. Doing so will allow Al Gore’s minions to identify you and ensure that you are prevented from getting anywhere near a microphone. I hope that I am wrong. It is possible as Gore is clearly not all that bright but his money allows him to hire bright people.

Compared to the current interglacial period, the previous interglacial period, the Eemian, was warmer than this one with more ice cap melting and higher sea levels yet Mankind did not burn fossil fuels during those times. What caused the Eemian, and could that same cause be affecting our climate today?
The lapse rate is really a measure of the insulating properties of the atmosphere. If CO2 really affected climate then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but such has not happened. Why?
An important part of the AGW conjecture is that more H2O in the atmosphere adds to warming because H2O is a greenhouse gas and in fact it is the primary greenhouse gas. Yet adding more H2O to the atmosphere lowers the over all lapse rate, a cooling effect, as evidenced by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly less than the dry lapse rate. How can one still claim that more CO2 causing more H2O to enter the atmosphere is a positive feedback when the fact is that more H2O causes cooling?
I can only assume that Mr. Gore will dispute any facts that you might base your question on and then would refer to the “scientific consensus” on the matter despite the fact that sceintists never registered and voted on the AGW conjecture as if it would make a difference anyway.

You could ask him why he believes that we should attribute any increases to the number of hurricanes or their severity to the increase in global temperatures when both NOAA and the UN IPCC have have stated that at this time it is not possible to distinguish between human influences and natural cycles with regards to either of these.

Going to see al gore would be as interesting as watching a repeat of his boring and non factual INCONVENIENT TRUTH. Save your time and money and stay at home and try to find a fool to buy your ticket.
AL GORE is a bafoon and a CON MAN who tried to CON the world with his garbage .
The day will come when AL GORE will be exposed as a oppertunist that stands to gain billions of dollars

In a staged setting like that nothing you ask will have any impact IMO. Better to just shout out at some point that he’s a fraud and a poser whose claims and predictions contradict reality at every turn, and the people in the audience are a bunch of mindless cultists.

maybe just ask Al :-
“what are you going to do when you`r finally proven wrong, which a lot of scientific data and research suggests”
in other words `my belief systems is better than your belief system`

If you’re going to ask him why the models are running hot, don’t use that Christy graph…he’s too well -known a skeptic, Gore will just shut you down on an ad hom. Instead refer to the Meers’ RSS graph comparing model runs vs mid tropospheric satellite T data (http://www.remss.com/research/climate.html) . Almost as good to show the models running hot, plus based on a completely independently measured dataset than the hot surface data which is what he’ll be relying on. Obviously no time to go into all the surface data issues in your question but you can mention the far more complete satellite coverage. Meers is a well known warmists and recently warmed his data interpretation as much as he could with honesty, but is too good a scientist to fudge it completely.

Have you ever seen a politician answer a question that he or she did not want to be asked?
?
?
?
No…I didn’t think so!
Even monkeys can be taught to do a few things really well. Al’s daddy trained Al to be a politician. He does that really well. He is very good at dodging questions he doesn’t want to be asked. I would warn Andy May that he cannot win at Al Gore’s game. There are no combinations of clever words that will trip up the Gorical, just as long as he has his typical audience of neophytes fawning over every word he says. This is a theatrical production. Nothing more. Andy will not be perceived as a thoughtful seeker of truth, but as a disruptive audience member ruining the show for everyone else.

Ask Al something easy…Like the scare tactics and pictures about the Polar Bears. Go to the Candian Polar Bear group site, who state how well the bear population is doing, and that their fall in numbers was really because of over hunting. Now that the hunting issue has been handled, they have rebounded very nicely, partly due to increase CO2’… Just a thought

Algore is a scientific illiterate. Any question relying on scientific thought will be blown off. Any question using or requiring numbers will lose the audience. Something simple like: “Many more people die from cold weather than from heat waves; why would a slightly warmer earth be a bad thing?”

“Over 97 percent of climate scientists …”
This can be refuted even without exposing the bogus sources. Anyone on this site can gin up a list of 30 non-warmista climate scientists. Can Al Gore generate a list of 970 true believers?“In the twentieth century alone, the average surface temperature increased by 0.8 degrees Celsius – a rate eight times faster than a typical post-ice-age-recovery. And this cycle is rapidly accelerating.”
Again we pull up Frank Lansner’s chart of all the interglacial warming stretches, how high they went and how long they lasted. We are smack-dab in the middle.http://www.rockyhigh66.org/stuff/rate_interglacial_temps.png

Having lost the 2000 Election … So Publicly … So Humiliatingly … So Despicably … Drove Mr. Al Gore (Albert P. Gore Jr.) into insanity. And in the now 17 years after the birth of the “Scientist” Global Warming Climate Crisis Al Gore … Oh Yes Made Billions of money indeed … the poor man is a living artifact of the phantasmagoria movie Brazil and needs to be put down like any anthrax infected goat for Christ sake, Mother Mary tears will wash his unholy soul.

The opening scene in “Inconvenient Truth” was a computer generated scene of ice breaking off of Antarctica. Why didn’t he use real footage and what are his thoughts on the fact that Antarctica has been cooling and ice increasing?

Your carbon footprint is x times the average global citizen. How can you ask others to sacrifice the obvious benefits of fossil fuel but you will not? Isn’t that hypocrisy?
Homework…
Estimated the value of Gore’s X

Please ask him about the dependence of climate science on correlations between cumulative values of time series data. These correlations contain a fatal statistics flaw. If the error is corrected, nothing remains of climate climate science. The whole of it sits on top of a stat error.
Please seehttps://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3000932

Andy – Best of luck, but frankly I think you are delusional thinking that Al Gore won’t choose the questions very carefully. But if you do get a question in, then I suggest that its aim should be to plant an idea and that it should be way way off the usual territory. ie, that the question itself is much more important than Al Gore’s answer. Maybe something like:-
Mr Gore: James Hansen of Colorado University has shown that even though sea levels were higher than today about 3 million years ago, “sea levels dropped to levels at least 100 meters below modern sea level on at least 4 occasions during the last 600,000 years“. A continuation of this cycle would make all the world’s harbours completely unusable. Would you agree that it would be beneficial if mankind could break the cycle by preventing temperatures from falling that much again?
Quote is from – https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/901

It is good, but unusable harbors is hardly the worst effect of a return to glacial conditions. NYC for instance, would not just be stranded inland, but under ice at least hundreds of feet high, rendering it even less useful for trade and commerce.

Andy–I suggest you ask him the following question deliberately phrased in the way of most global warming surveys–that is a question that puts the responder on the defensive.
Physics as we understand it today says heat cannot be trapped. How then is it proper to call Co2 a heat-trapping gas?

Andy, in the words of Maverick (or his RIO) in the movie Top Gun, you are entering a target rich zone. The trouble is, the leader of the opposing forces is incompetent. There’s little satisfaction in taking candy from a baby.

@Andy May after posting your questions here you can be sure that Gore’s Gestapo will see your ticket being cancelled and you will be denied(!) access. Truth, other than their’s, is inconvenient to them.

I wondered about that. This is a well-read blog. I will drive down there and try and attend the lecture. If I’m denied entry after posting this, that will be quite a newsworthy event. So, this blog post, in a way, is insurance. We’ll see how it goes.

Listening to advertising is intolerable. Respect for willingly exposing yourself to it. But, usually it offers an opportunity. The most outrageous BS usually comes at the end. Tends to silence both the speaker and the audience for a couple of seconds. And that’s the moment to call it. No need for shouting, perfect timing is enough. The more obviously BS the claim was, the louder an educated audience will laugh.

Good point, how about this: “Science is a process of testing theories. We challenge them continually, they survive if they meet all challenges. If man-made global warming cannot be challenged, doesn’t that make it unscientific?”

Al Gore’s bank balance must have been getting low so time for more scare mongering. There’ll be a lot of media coverage of his visit and no doubt, more pressure will be put on the government to do more than they are by those who believe whatever they’re told to believe.

Mr. Gore, speaking of personal choices, what are the best ways for an individual to mitigate CO2 emissions and how much those will affect the local sea level at New York?
Just make sure he talks about concrete stuff. It will go haywire.

Submit a question that appeals to his vanity (e.g. What is it like being so smart but so humble at the same time?) so that it has a good chance of being selected. When it is your turn to genuflect in his direction, ask a different question that he might stumble over.

Miami Beach history may be fruitful. It is a frequent prop for him in interviews and his movies.
I believe the original streets were laid out BELOW King tide in 1917 and streets flooded regularly THEN.
Along came a hurricane in 1926 that wiped out the town and it took years before the town was re-established.
A question along the line of “what is different in Miami Beach today?” or “Why do you use that town as an example when it ALWAYS flooded?” may be understandable to the audience. (and therefore will be screened out.)

Miami Beach was a dredge and fill project. It set the development stage for coastal Florida during the first three quarters of the 20th Century. Boca Ciega was the largest Florida dredge and fill project. Gore, et al all know that Miami Beach like other areas suffers from subsidence and beach erosions. The latter caused primarily due to the lack of sand transport down the beach generally caused by carefully controlled inlets.

Ask the moderator why a prestigious university such as Rice that prides itself on academic excellence would risk its reputation by paying a fee of $100,000+ to host a speech by Al Gore. Even if he waived the fee, the question stands.

How about this – Mr. Gore – if we took all the money spent on climate change and instead spent it on fusion research (hot or cold) we could have limitless clean energy within a couple decades, thereby ending the threat of global warming and ushering in Utopia.
Wonder what his answer would be?

“Al Gore believes it is primarily man-made carbon dioxide due to burning fossil fuels,”
Al Gore does not believe this. You just explained, he has no idea about any sort of technical truths.
He has just recognized an opportunity to remain relevant to his faction by mouthing the canards of AGW. He has scored much gold this way, still gets invited to lecture, still makes his ridiculous movies, all because of scientifically unproven and extremely unlikely “Beliefs” that many share. Science is not something to be taken on faith, but scientific illiterates such as Man-Bear-Pig can do no else.

Al Gore is obviously a “do as I say,” not a “do as I do” person. The key question to ask him is:
Mr. Gore, if you believe that CO2 emissions are dangerous, how much CO2 do you emit each year, to what level do you want to reduce your own emissions, and what are you personally doing to reduce your own CO2 emissions?
Of course, he would never allow this question to be asked.

How about something along the lines of,
“If we are all to make sacrifices to combat Climate Change, how come so many to those saying that are getting so rich?”
Or just a simple,
“Mr. Gore, when has the climate NOT changed?”

If I may, Andy, do not bother to go.
Give your ticket to the most outrageously gullible warmer you know.
Then treat yourself to an activity you will actually enjoy.
Life is too short to waste on creatures like Al Gore.

Three short simple questions;
1. He and the IPCC received the Nobel PEACE prize; why wasn’t it a science prize?
2. Why isn’t it bringing peace?
3. Would he explain why what little peace being achieved is through the use of fossil fuels.

I think ask him an honest, intelligent question that he believes is core to his central belief and one that his team may consider such as: Mr. Gore, assuming we could reduce CO2 in the atmosphere to preindustrial times or even 350 ppmv as many suggest, how long would it take Earth to recover to a safe, normal condition that would stop all the perils that GW or CC are having on the climate of the planet?
P.S. This is bit of a loaded question since assuming that we return to some climate bliss is highly speculative. There is no right answer to this question since nobody knows with any certainy what the long term sensitivity is of increased CO2 is on the atmospheric system. However, getting him to acknowledge that it will reverse the climate volatility to ‘safe’ conditions where there is no more harm would have him on the historical record for future generations to assess the validity of the CAGW as stated in the late 20th and early 21st century. Even more so if he provides a timeline when the earth climate will stabilize. For the record, I personally don’t believe that CO2 is the problem it is made out to be by the alarmists. UHI probably has more to do with wild wacky weather locally where it is created, due to additive convective heating. IMHO…

You want something that won’t throw up any red flags for his screeners, but will skewer him with a knight fork: where he must give a truthful answer that’s unflattering to his message, or a false/misleading answer that can be fact-checked afterwards.
“I’m sure you agree that climate change affects us all, Mr. Gore. Would you share with us how much you, yourself, have been affected by this crisis?”

Ha, If you were to ask that great question al may likely have an aneurysm (please video this)! This douchebag is only promoting the globalists/luciferian agenda. I try to respect scientists but many of them carry a messiah complex while being proud atheists. I enjoy physical proof myself but see our creators hand in many things daily. Decades of “proven” sci facts are dismissed routinely they just follow the funding. Just be ready to escape before al hits the floor. When al leaves it’ll be on a solar jet of course, back to his 4mil beach house that Should be submerged by his prediction yrs back. If he weren’t out to refluff his account, I’m sick of our royal inbred elites hypocrisy & the ignorant masses they ride on. Time for a tidal wave of karmic justice..

I’d be interested in learning in what daily things you see a creator’s hand.
Thanks.
From what I see daily, any creator must be a sadistic demon, enjoying nature red in tooth and claw, as well as intentionally deceptive and supremely incompetent. Far better if such a cruel monster were to ignore creation.

Mr. Gore
1. How many tropical storms affected the USA in the year of your birth?
2. What was the date for the first snow in the contiguous 48 US states in the year of your birth?
3. What was the maximum temperature reached anywhere in the contiguous 48 US states in the year of your birth?
4. What was the sea-level in the year of your birth, and where, in the contiguous 48 US states, has disappeared through inundation because of sea-level rise since then?
How do these figure compare to last year?From wikipedia Al Gore born March 31, 1948.

Al, when assisting at the launch of the fraudulent shakedown attempt known as AGs United For Clean Power, which itself was based on the fraudulent #ExxonKnew nonsense, you stated
“Fifty percent of the people of Puerto Rico are estimated to get the zika virus this year [2016]. By next year, 80%”.
Puerto Rico declared the zika outbreak over in June of this year, identifying a total of a little more than 40,000 cases – approximately 1% of the population.
Are you as glad as I am that George Bush won?

“Mr. Gore, what claims in your first film do you wish you hadn’t made, or had made differently?”
That’s nice and insidious—it puts him in an awkward spot. If he says “Nothing” or “Very little,” he’ll re-commit himself to falsified claims and look as though he’s doubling down out of desperation. If we walks back his claims he’ll be on the defensive and diminish his credibility regarding his current claims.

If I may…
As anything scientific you ask him will be either obfuscated or dismissed-tending-to-ad hominem, why not play a score out of the alarmists’ songbook and hit him where he lives, literally? Mr. Gore – you’ve arrogated for yourself a leadership role in the global effort to combat anthropogenic climate change – why do you use so much energy in your personal lifestyle?

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on WUWT. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. This notice is required by recently enacted EU GDPR rules, and since WUWT is a globally read website, we need to keep the bureaucrats off our case!OkPrivacy policy